The Truth About Terrorism, Part II: X-ray-ted

I was watching The Daily Show With Jon Stewart the other night when he and his guest were discussing a very good point: Republicans and the pro-Republican media are making too much of an issue about the threat of terrorism. I’ve touched on this before. After all, as Stewart and his guest pointed out, the chances of the average American being killed in a terrorist attack are very slim.

The reason for this is simple to even the dimmest observer: We only have conclusive evidence that terrorism can kill Americans and that terrorists want to kill Americans. But that’s not what’s important. What’s important here is that the evidence we do have is only one very serious terrorist attack on American soil. Just fewer than 3,000 of us were killed. So there’s only a modest statistical likelihood that the average American will be killed in a terrorist attack, as compared with, say, the likelihood of dying from a stroke.

As humans, we naturally try to be proactive about threats to our safety. We have doctors to help us lower the risks of a stroke and other medical dangers. We have parents to teach us not to bring the radio into the bath with us. And we have common sense to teach us not to drive into oncoming traffic.

However, the unique thing about the threat of terrorism is that we don’t have such control over it. Unless we dismantle the entire Western world, there will always be terrorists who want to kill us. For this reason, we not only shouldn’t make a big deal out of the threat of terrorism, but we should just drop the issue altogether. All we’re doing is stressing everyone out about a threat we can’t alleviate. And even if there were something we could do to protect ourselves, like wiretapping known jihadist militants, we shouldn’t do it, because, again, the evidence we have for this threat is only one major attack on our soil.

To put this in perspective, consider car accidents. Right after America’s very first fatal car collision, there was very little chance for the average American to die in a traffic accident — most didn’t have cars, because cars were relatively new. So there wasn’t much point in worrying about another fatal accident. It would have been a waste of time to refine traffic rules, improve road signs, and encourage people to drive carefully. The same goes for the aftermath of the first fatal plane crash. Most people weren’t regularly flying on planes, so what would have been the point in taking a look at what went wrong and trying to prevent it from happening again?

Likewise with terrorism, until we allow a few more attacks on American civilians, there isn’t enough direct evidence to worry. In fact, there might never be, because there’s little reason to think there will ever be another attack on American soil.

For these reasons, it’s outrageous that the threat of terrorism is such a big issue with the media and with politicians, especially Republicans, who pretend that they want the country to be safe. Why haven’t we been warned about other dangers like, say, smoking or AIDS or drugs or E. coli or drunk driving or killer bees or Ebola or guns or the flesh-eating disease or Walmart or obesity or the bird flu or Y2K or McDonald’s?

If you ask me, the terrorism card is played so that Republicans can avoid addressing the greatest danger to us: man-made greenhouse gasses. Those who point out that there is no conclusive evidence that it is man-made greenhouse gasses that are warming the climate should remember something: The conclusive evidence we have of the threat of terrorism (one major attack) is only slightly more than the conclusive evidence we have of man-made greenhouse gasses being the major cause of global warming (nothing). One and none, or something and nothing, aren’t very different.

But Stewart’s guest had a different and very interesting view on why terrorism might be such a prominent issue. It’s not because jihadists want to destroy the Western world. And it’s not because, as Stewart regularly points out, we’ve made them even angrier than they already were, by “liberating” Iraq and Afghanistan. According to Stewart’s guest, terrorism is a leading issue because of the puppetry of the X-ray industry.

With all of our unnecessary security these days, particularly in airports, X-ray machines are in higher demand than in previous years. The X-ray industry decided that it enjoyed the extra profits and set out to bully Republicans and every outlet of all major media across the country into constantly reminding us that there are determined people who would kill us if they had the chance. As Tim Robbins in Team America: World Police would say, the X-ray Mafia scaring us is just another case of the corporations being “corporationy”.

I don’t know how the X-ray Mafia was able to rise to such power, and I don’t think I want to know. But if anyone offers you an alternative argument about why terrorism is such an important issue, I trust that you won’t need an X-ray machine to see through it.